


who thrives in half-lights

by Sroloc_Elbisivni



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Alternate Universe - Benzaiten Steel Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baby Rabbits, Junoverse | Juno Steel Universe, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, The Penumbra Minibang, martian sewer rabbits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:02:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24201013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/pseuds/Sroloc_Elbisivni
Summary: Trudging through the sewers of Mars on a missing person's case was not the kind of job Peter Nureyev had intended for infiltrating the Thebian Ballet Company to lead to, but blackmail and Dark Matters make for a rather tight trap.Juno Steel would just like to figure out what the hell it is Small Fry's been stealing, while dodging whoever it is that's trying to track him down this time.The sewer rabbit babysitter AU.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev & Benzaiten Steel, Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	who thrives in half-lights

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work for the 2020 Penumbra Mini Bang! Thank you to the mods for making arrangements, and thank you _so much_ to my collaborators: [ bluejorts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluejorts/pseuds/bluejorts), [ nottodaylogic, ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MandaloreArtist/pseuds/Nottodaylogic) and [ Zelly.](https://www.instagram.com/zelly.doodle) Updates to follow every three days. Art links in the end notes. Titles from Conrad Aiken.

There was something unidentifiable dripping onto Axel Moss’s trench coat.

Normally, Peter Nureyev’s curiosity was an inescapable trait, no matter what alias he poured himself into. This time, however, it was very easy to restrain himself and not think about whatever was trickling from the tunnel ceiling.

Moss didn’t want to think about anything right now, except the next turn he had to take on his search pattern. If he focused on that, this could just be another stakeout, or reconnaissance for a heist, or infiltration. Really, anything other than slogging through the filthy sewer of the oldest colony city in the solar system in search of a ghost.

Axel Moss didn’t care where this job came from. He was useful like that. But in the back of his head, Peter was lamenting ever taking the job with the Thebian Ballet Company.

* * *

Honestly, the ballet job was supposed to have been a _vacation_. Have someone else worry about his food and housing for a while, improve his acrobatic skills while showing off a bit, and along the way pick up some particularly valuable documents from the office of Thebes’s Cultural Director that would lead him to some excellent scores.

He had just gotten out of this last activity, and was feeling particularly smug about it, when one of the other dancers shoved him up against the wall.

“Oh, my goodness.” Adam Tiler had a lovely theatrical gasp, eyes going wide and guileless. He was naïve, too, so Peter let a blush creep over his cheeks and hands curl in under the grip of one Benzaiten Steel. “I—what are you—this is _very forward_ of you, Benzaiten!”

He hadn’t seen Benzaiten Steel express attraction to anyone beyond the baseless flirtations that were a large component of friendship for any group of high strung performers obsessed with their bodies sharing a close space for twelve hours a day. There was a chance the accusation, especially from poor, wide-eyed, little boy out for the first time in the big galaxy Adam Tiler would unnerve him enough to loosen his grip.

Benzaiten just snorted. “Cute. You try that on all the pretty boys?”

 _Just the ones who corner me in hallways and hold me up against a wall_. That was too flippant for Tiler to say, and Peter didn’t think he needed to blow this cover just yet. “I’m—what are you talking about?”

Benzaiten raised one eyebrow and waved a drive in Tiler’s face with his free hand.

The drive filled with documents Peter had just finished stealing out of the Thebian Cultural Director’s office.

Oh. _Drat_. Benzaiten had rather cleverer fingers than he needed as a dancer, didn’t he.

He slid it back into Tiler’s pocket with a too-friendly little pat. “Sooooooo, you can try and run me around some more while I wait for the Director to get back from his lunch break and tell him all about how I saw my friend sneaking in and out of the office and I’m so _worried_ about him, what if something’s _wrong_. Or we can go somewhere quieter and have ourselves a nice long chat about what it would take for me to not do that.”

* * *

There was no particular point to being Axel Moss—his client for this job was more familiar with Rex Glass. The reason Axel Moss was wading through this sewer was that Rex Glass would never be caught dead in a Martian sewer without very good reason, and preferably, backup to do the actual wading.

Once upon a time Peter Nureyev would have been thrilled to find a nice, old, abandoned sewer to hide in. Old was safe. It meant no one cared enough to check up on it. Abandoned was even better. Abandoned was private.

Something on the wall caught his eye, and Peter slowed and moved his light to illuminate a deep scratch mark on the wall—fresh enough that the mold hadn’t grown back over it yet.

Well. Abandoned by _humans_. Right.

Once Axel Moss had actually managed to _find_ Benzaiten’s twin, and once whatever most flattering combination of personas had managed to persuade the man out of the sewers, Peter Nureyev would rather like to buy him a drink and get tips on staying as thoroughly hidden as he had clearly needed to in his years down here. If Juno Steel could survive extended periods of time in the habitat of things that could do _that_ to solid concrete, he must be practically invisible.

But Peter knew all about seeing the invisible. Which, to his sorrow, was why he was here.

* * *

By the time Benzaiten was theatrically bowing him into an empty dressing room, Peter had already decided on his strategy.

As soon as the door start, he started sweeping the room for bugs—checking behind light fixtures, looking under the dressing table, opening drawers—with the kind of steady, concentrated, ungraceful motion that didn’t belong to a dancer like Adam Tiler.

“Uh, what—" Ben started to ask.

“ _Shhh_ ,” Rex Glass murmured, firm in tone but soft in volume. “Let me work.”

It was best to always take control of a situation, even when you were on the defensive. _Especially_ when you were on the defensive.

There were no bugs in the room, of course, but Peter made sure to be thorough anyways. When he turned back around, Benzaiten was watching him with a narrow gaze, clearly recalculating.

Excellent.

“Alright,” Ben said, slowly. “What was that about?”

“I was hoping not to compromise my mission further, if you don’t mind.” Glass’s tone was mild—it usually was. That would fit here, but it was necessary to turn down the persona’s flirtation. Benzaiten might read it as an attempt at distraction, and what Glass needed right now was authority.

Ben’s eyebrows went up by a fraction. “Mission,” he said, flatly. “A mission that led you to steal from the Cultural Director of a minor moon of Jupiter?”

“Oh, but Thebes has such a _rich_ cultural history. Some of it is even indigenous.”

Benzaiten was a clever boy, clearly; he put Glass’s implications together very quickly. “You’re saying there’s a smuggling operation?”

“Mm.” Glass examined his nails, absently rubbing at one corner. Tiler bit his nails, a habit several of the dancers more inclined to be nurturing had decided to convince him out of. It had been a wonderful way to earn their trust. “Not the sort of thing that can be simply busted, of course. My organization is rather less concerned with the smuggling itself, and more with the…shall we say, curious nature of certain artifacts being smuggled. The kind of things that more often belong to ghost stories.”

“Ghost…” Benzaiten trailed off. “You’re with Dark Matters.”

Benzaiten was a _very_ clever boy.

“Agent Rex Glass, at your service.” This was going perfectly.

“ _You’re_ with Dark Matters.”

“I am.” Peter smiled the kind of sharp-toothed smile that was meant to work with sunglasses, and hoped it would do the job anyways.

“So you must be pretty good at finding people.”

“Oh, yes. If you’re thinking of running, I wouldn’t advise it. We can and will look anywhere in the universe.”

“Great!” Ben’s face switched from furrowed and concentrated to a beaming grin. “There’s someone I need you to find.”

“I beg your pardon?”

* * *

It was easy to fall into a trance down here. The _slosh_ of his boots moving forward. The distant echoes of sound, especially when he passed directly under a grate from a busy street. The _clang_ of old pipes complaining about their load.

…The occasional threatening _roar_ , far off in the distance.

Really, when Benzaiten had off-handedly mentioned the six-foot sewer rabbits, Peter had thought he was _joking_. There was no reason, earthly, Marsly, or otherwise for rabbits to be larger than the size of a loaf of bread. Rabbits should be _cute_ , and eat carrots, and wriggle their little noses, or whatever it was rabbits did when they weren’t behaving like _animals_ living in _sewers_.

When Benzaiten had gotten to the ‘rabbits’ part of the explanation, Peter had attempted then, rather valiantly to explain to him the extreme unlikelihood of Juno Steel’s continued existence.

Ben had responded with a scoff, an eye-roll, and security camera footage from the previous month. It showed a figure—who, all right, did resemble Benzaiten in build and coloring—shuffling into a convenience store to purchase a blaster cartridge, a bottle of whiskey, ration bars, and carrot cake.

Peter was still at something of a loss to explain the carrot cake.

He came to the end of the tunnel, where it formed a T-cross with another, and turned to the right with a sigh. This was taking him away from the street, which meant that the only sound for the next twenty minutes would probably be the lapping of water, and whatever that distant squeaking was.

Distant…squeaking...

Axel Moss came to a full stop, letting the water settle so he could listen as hard as he could.

Yes, that was definitely squeaking, definitely from much further ahead.

Moss started to move again, slowly and carefully, as silently as possible.

* * *

“I need you to find someone,” Benzaiten repeated. “My brother’s fallen out of contact and I can’t break my contract to go find him.”

“Surely you could simply _hire_ someone,” Peter pointed out. “I’m given to understand that there are many people in the galaxy who do this sort of thing for a living!” He threw in a Rex Glass laugh, light and thoughtless.

“Yeah, that’s not…really an option.” Benzaiten shrugged. “Most of the locals don’t like him, and anyone who would go to Mars just for payment would probably be mercenary enough to get paid to do anything else.”

“Ah, so instead you’re choosing....to commandeer a Dark Matters Agent.” The tone is one Peter has perfected across several covers, a kind tone that manages to make people realize how stupid their ideas are.

Benzaiten grins in a way that is....not reassuring in the slightest. Peter’s well-honed sense of foreboding gives an unfortunately late twitch.

“You work for Agent W, right?”

* * *

The voice on the other end of the call is one that Peter has striven to interact with as little as possible, the better to maintain his cover. Having a boss in a persona is a necessary complication when infiltrating an organization, but the balance of interactions required to make someone forgettable except when a confirmation of identity becomes vital is truly agonizing.

Dark Matters’ internal structure works to Peter’s benefit, in this case; he doesn’t have to worry that Agent W will ask question about how, precisely, he made his way to Thebes. She will simply assume she isn’t responsible for this particular operation and only track down answers in the name of her own curiosity later. If she has time. Which she inevitably won’t.

Ah, the joys of an externally-focused security system and an organization infamous for schemes, secrecy, and backstabbing.

“Agent W,” he said, once her curt response came across. “I’m with someone attempting to commandeer my services. He wished to speak with you.”

And then he promptly handed the device over to Benzaiten, confident Agent W would have him scared off in a matter of moments and Peter could get on with escaping this rapidly destabilizing situation.

“Heeeeey, Sasha! How’s the job?”

…Oh. Oh, Peter had _severely_ miscalculated.

Benzaiten’s tone remained friendly and chatty throughout the call, though Peter didn’t pay it much attention. He was too busy lamenting his terrible luck.

He tuned back in when Benzaiten’s voice dropped into a darker register, because if there were serious consequences coming his way Peter needed to be alert to them this time.

“I _can’t,_ Sash. He’s my sibling. You know what this means to me. I _know_ you know what this means to me.” He paused, listening. “I know it’s a low blow. I don’t care right now.” Another pause. “Yeah. I am.”

Finally, he let out a relieved gust of an exhale. “You, too. I’ll tell him. Bye.” He handed the comms back with a little smirk.

“Agent Glass. Wrap up your current business as soon as possible. My assistant will contact you with travel details for Mars.”

Well, this was…superb.

“And what, precisely, is my assignment?”

“Find Juno Steel and get him somewhere safe. Consider Benzaiten Steel a secondary handler for this mission.”

“I…see. Acknowledged. Glass out.”

He hung up the call and stared at Benzaiten, who looked smug as a cat. Or a successful thief.

“Mars?”

“Yeah. Hyperion City. Sort…of. He, uh.” And now Benzaiten looked rather sheepish, running a hand through his hair. “He’s got a history of dropping off the grid.”

“So I should prepare for a desert trek?”

“Not exaaaaactly.”

* * *

Axel held his breath as he turned a corner, shielding his flashlight against his body. There _was_ squeaking coming from this direction—soft, faint, squeaking, but squeaking nonetheless.

If it was the young of the creatures that lived down here, he would have to be extremely careful. Interacting with their young could prime the adults for violence. But this tunnel was the next one on his search pattern, and he had to pass through it to get to the sector he had yet to search. So if he just kept moving very quietly and very slowly there was a good chance he could just sneak through.

Peter lifted his chin to clear his airway and breathe as quietly as he could, sliding his feet through the water delicately enough not to make a splash. Looks like those weeks practicing pliés were paying off.

He was paying such close attention to his own noise that he almost didn’t notice it when a voice started muttering.

“Hey, Small Fry, what have you got there?” A squeak. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. I can see it.” A series of smaller squeaks. “See, now these guys all want one. And I bet you didn’t bring enough for everyone.”

What…on earth? Or on Mars, even?

Peter flicked his flashlight out, directly at the source of the sound.

For exactly two seconds, he had a clear glimpse of a figure seated on one of the walkways above the main stream of the sewer. It was a human, but it took Peter a moment to sort out the body shape from the series of fluffy-eared lumps piled around and on top of him. And it was most definitely a _him_ —the resemblance to Benzaiten was more obvious than Peter had been expecting.

For another two seconds, Axel Moss and Juno Steel stared at each other in shock.

And then Juno’s face dropped into something terribly hard and his right hand flew up, disturbing the little rabbits who had been making themselves comfortable by his side. Peter had just enough time to track the shape of a blaster before his flashlight shattered.

In the aftermath of the explosion, he could make out a series of splashes and chorus of wailing yips getting further and further away down the tunnel, but couldn’t quite make himself go after them.

* * *

After outlining on a map where, exactly, Peter would have to begin his search, Benzaiten had shrugged.

“Honestly, it’s not that big down there. Finding him isn’t going to be your biggest problem.”

“Oh?” Peter had given him an arch look, managing to tear his focus away from the map. Now that he had re-oriented to his new situation, it was easy to focus on the ‘fascinating puzzle’ part and less on the ‘blackmail’ part.

“Getting him to come out is gonna be harder.”

“Mmmm.” Peter had returned his attention to the map, ranking that low on the list of concerns. Assuming Juno bore sufficient similarity to Benzaiten, seducing him wouldn’t be much of a hardship. By the time he was through, Juno Steel would be willing to follow him anywhere.

* * *

Peter stood in the dark of the sewers for a good thirty seconds before climbing up onto the walkway and making for the nearest exit.

Perhaps he had been rather hasty in making his initial plans, but this was what revisions were for. Now he just had to acquire another flashlight, a decent stunner, several feet of strong rope, and a hose with strong but not painful water pressure.

And an apartment with no interfering neighbors.

**Author's Note:**

> [Bluejorts's piece, Peter exploring Hyperion City's storm drains. ](https://nurgayev.tumblr.com/post/618205015837966336/hmmmmm-someones-hiding-my-piece-for)   
>  [ Zelly's piece, Benzaiten having a great time calling Sasha Wire. ](https://zellymaybloom.tumblr.com/post/618204588908167168/penumbrabang-ehe-and-writer-srolocelbisivni-who)   
>  [Nottodaylogic's piece, Peter's flashlight catching Juno with a lap full of rabbits](https://nottodaylogic.tumblr.com/post/618184323097575424/this-is-my-art-for-sroloc-elbisvni-s-excellent)


End file.
